Dr Steven Yeh on Patients Treated With Xipere and Its Use Over the Long Term

Triamcinolone acetonide injectable suspension (Xipere) uses a novel delivery mechanism that seems to benefit all patients with macular edema due to noninfectious uveitis, regardless of where the inflammation occurs, said Steven Yeh, MD, professor and the Stanley Truhlsen Jr. Chair in Ophthalmology at the Truhlsen Eye Institute, University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Transcript

Are there certain patients who respond better to triamcinolone acetonide injectable suspension (Xipere), which delivers treatment via the suprachoroidal space?

Sure, so Xipere is a medication that's a suprachoroidally delivered triamcinolone acetonide—it’s a corticosteroid that's used to treat macular edema due to noninfectious uveitis. And patients who seem to benefit from this medication, Xipere, are patients who have uveitis involving all anatomic locations within the eye. This can range from patients with anterior uveitis, or inflammation that affects the front of the eye, to posterior uveitis, involving the retina and the choroid.

So, it turns out that all these patients, whether it's anterior uveitis; intermediate uveitis, involving the middle portion of the eye; or posterior uveitis, involving the back of the eye, can all benefit from Xipere in terms of treatment of their retinal edema, their retinal swelling, due to their eye inflammation.

This is a novel delivery method: what do we need to keep an eye on in the long term?

In the long term, we really need to think about a patient's vision from the standpoint of treatment for the best corrected visual acuity, as well as reduction of swelling, as measured by optical coherence tomography. So, we think about the visual acuity outcomes, which are the outcomes that are most important to our patients, as well as what we see in the clinic and structurally when we have imaging techniques that we use to monitor this disease.

Moving forward, we think about the side effect profile—there's a very low risk of cataract in the patients who are treated with Xipere in the clinical trials, and a very low and acceptable risk of elevations in intraocular pressure varying between 1 in 7 to 1 in 8 patients who received the medication in the context of the PEACHTREE and the AZALEA trials.